A Question of Genocide

Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire

Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark

Perennially controversial subject, given the official state-sponsored campaign to deny what happened.

Features Turkish and Armenian scholars together in a single volume.

Multinational cast of contributors draws on international archives and documents in a range of languages.

A Question of Genocide

Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire

Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark

Description

One hundred years after the deportations and mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other peoples in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the history of the Armenian genocide is a victim of historical distortion, state-sponsored falsification, and deep divisions between Armenians and Turks. Working together for the first time, Turkish, Armenian, and other scholars present here a compelling reconstruction of what happened and why.

This volume gathers the most up-to-date scholarship on Armenian genocide, looking at how the event has been written about in Western and Turkish historiographies; what was happening on the eve of the catastrophe; portraits of the perpetrators; detailed accounts of the massacres; how the event has been perceived in both local and international contexts, including World War I; and reflections on the broader implications of what happened then. The result is a comprehensive work that moves beyond nationalist master narratives and offers a more complete understanding of this tragic event.

Part II On the Eve of CatastropheCh3. The Silence of the Land: Agrarian Relations, Ethnicity, and Power, Stephan H. AstourianCh 4. What was Revolutionary about Armenian Political Parties in the Ottoman Empire?, Gerald J. LibaridianCh 5. Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Army and the Ottoman Defeat in the Balkan War of 1912-1913, Fikret AdanirCh 6. From Patriotism to Mass Murder: Dr. Mehmed Reshid (1873-1919), Hans-Lukas Kieser

Part III Genocide in International ContextCh 7. The Politics and Practice of the Russian Occupation of Armenia, 1915-February 1917, Peter HolquistCh 8. Germany and the Young Turks: Revolutionaries into Statesmen, Eric D. WeitzCh 9. Who Still Talked about the Extermination of the Armenians? German Talk and German Silences, Margaret Lavinia Anderson

Part IV Genocide in Local ContextCh 10. Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide, Aram ArkunCh 11. The Ottoman Treatment of the Assyrians, David GauntCh 12. The First World War and the Development of the Armenian Genocide, Donald BloxhamCh 13. Pouring a People into the Desert: The "Definitive Solution" of the Unionists to the Armenian Question, Fuat Dündar

A Question of Genocide

Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire

Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark

Reviews and Awards

"The positive effects of comparative history are evident throughout this collection of essays. It is not only the sophistication of Holocaust history on which these authors have drawn, but the large body of scholarship on post-1945 genocidal events as well."--Slavic Review

"Provides invaluable analytical perspectives on the Armenian Genocide that educators may use to help students gain a more complete understanding. The volume's careful attention to the complexity of identity construction in the Ottoman Empire contributes important nuance to the Armenian Genocide narrative, highlighting dynamics that transcend Turkish-Armenian relations within the empire."--World History Connected

"The book as a whole is indeed something much larger than the sum of its parts...This volume presents new and important research that will make it required reading for any scholar in the field or on any course syllabus on the topic."--The Historian

"As a scholarly addition to the understanding of the Armenian genocide, the late Ottoman Empire, and the beginning of the Turkish Republic--A Question of Genocide succeeds."--H-Net

"Nearly a century on from the attempted Ottoman destruction of the Armenians, Turkish politics of denial, on the one hand, and an Armenian mythic representation of a singular Turkish guilt, on the other, have repeatedly sabotaged chances for dialogue. Yet in this book a group of leading historians from both sides of the divide, and beyond, demonstrate that the reality of genocide can be examined in its multi-causal dimensions not only without partisanship but in recognition of a shared history. A Question of Genocide can be read as a breakthrough historical study providing a contextualized, nuanced yet sensitive set of interpretations of an Armenian--but also wider Ottoman--tragedy. Equally, however, it may come to be remembered as a timely intervention on the path to reconciliation between post-Ottoman peoples."--Mark Levene, University of Southampton

"Although the Armenian genocide is probably the clearest case of that crime apart from the Holocaust, for political reasons it has been one of the more controversial. A Question of Genocide offers valuable new studies of this very important topic, written by some of the leading experts in the field, including both Armenian and Turkish scholars. It carries on the work of the courageous Turkish Armenian writer Hrant Dink, who was assassinated in Istanbul in 2007."-Ben Kiernan, author of Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur